A large portion of traditional print media (e.g., newspapers, books, research papers, etc.) are viewed on electronic devices. Although much of this media is viewed on personal computers, other types of viewing devices are becoming increasingly popular. For example, mobile smart phones and electronic book readers are convenient devices that enable people to view electronic content having text and images.
Viewing devices come in a variety of sizes. Some viewing devices, such as notebook computers, may include a relatively large screen. Other devices, such as mobile telephones, may include a smaller screen that limits an amount of content that can be displayed on the screen at one time.
To accommodate the variance in display sizes of viewing devices, many devices rely on an operating system and/or browser to format text and images to create a functional arrangement of the content. Often, electronic content is formatted using hypertext markup language (HTML) to enable a display of the text in accordance with user- or device-defined preferences. One advantage of HTML is an ability to reflow text from a first line to a subsequent line (or vice versa) when the text would otherwise extend beyond a viewable boundary of a display area. In this way, HTML may avoid the use of horizontal scroll bars when text can be reflowed to subsequent lines.
HTML is often used to present images for display on the electronic devices. A common type of image used in HTML is a raster graphic image (e.g., bitmap, JPEG, etc.), which is a pixel-based format commonly used for photographs. Because raster graphics are resolution dependent, images may appear pixilated when an image is enlarged or may appear distorted when the image is reduced in size. Advantages of raster graphics, meanwhile, include an ability to store any type of image, as well as standardized usage across many applications. In some instances, HTML may add scroll bars to a display to enable viewing an image that extends beyond the viewable boundary of the display area. The scroll bars may break a flow of content and require use of additional navigation commands to view the image via the scroll bars.
One drawback of HTML is a reliance on a host viewing device to include a font designated by HTML code in order for text to appear as an author intends the text to appear. When the font is not loaded in the host viewing device, the device may substitute use of the requested font with a default font or the device may produce an error message. In particular, fonts that include equations and/or custom typefaces may not reproduce properly on a host viewing device when the host does not include a loaded font designated by the HTML code.